The Great Vader
by jedimasterroyal
Summary: Vader was the single most hopeful person I have ever met and am likely to meet again. — Vader, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life. Great Gatsby SW rewrite. So AU.
1. Introduction

**_THE GREAT VADER_**

_Hey everyone!_

_So here's this multi-chapter fic that I've had in my mind for almost a year. I love Great Gatsby and I love the movie with Leo DiCaprio (who deserves an Oscar). I feel like there's some parallels when it comes to Gatsby and Anakin/Vader so I've thought about it real hard and finally got it done. I'll try to schedule my updates but I am a very busy person so it'll probably have a few kinks. Nonetheless I hope you enjoy. Most of it is a mix between the book and the movie script. There will be some changes because I have to make it fit with the SW universe and there might be some questions that will be raised, so just imagine that it's very AU. And if you want to imagine Anakin and Obi-Wan in 1920s wear, go for it, I mean it's pretty hot._

**_-jedimasterroyal_**

**_*PS Obi-Wan is Nick_**

_Without further ado..._

* * *

In my younger and more vulnerable years Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Always try to see the best in people," he would say, "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

He didn't say any more, but we had always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. As a consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that during my service in the Clone Wars I was unjustly accused of being a negotiator, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.

But even I have a limit…

Back then all of us drank too much. The more in tune with the times we were, the more we drank. And none of us contributed anything new.

When I came back from Coruscant last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. I was disgusted. Disgusted with everyone, and everything. Only one man was exempt from my disgust.

Vader.

Vader was the single most hopeful person I have ever met and am likely to meet again. — Vader, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life. He was like one of those machines that registered sonic quakes ten thousand parsecs away.

This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament." No — Vader turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Vader, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

In the summer of that fateful year the tempo of the city planet approached hysteria. All of Coruscant boomed in a steady golden roar. The parties were bigger; the opera shows broader; the buildings higher; the morals were looser; and the ban on liquor had backfired….making alcohol cheaper.

Coruscant was luring the young and ambitious. And I was one of them.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people of Naboo for three generations. The Kenobis are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we're descended from the great King Jafan, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother, who came here during the Gungan-Naboo War from Stewjon, and started the wholesale fishing equipment business that my father carries on to this day.

I graduated from Theed University, and a little later I participated in that mess that was the Clone Wars. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world, Naboo now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe — so I decided to go to Coruscant and join the Imperial Academy. Everybody I knew was either a Stormtrooper, General, or Admiral, so I supposed it could support one more single man.

I rented an apartment in the newly minted Imperial Center, a new district forged from the remains of the what had once been grounds for the Jedi Temple. It was a forgotten droid maintenance flat in one of the millions of high rises that housed the newly rich.

To get started I bought a dozen volumes on diplomacy and weapons and leadership, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold shining secrets. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in Theed University— one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the "Theed Tribune."— and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again the most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an epigram — life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

With the sun shining, I planned to spend the summer studying. And I probably would have were it not for the riotous amusements that beckoned beyond the walls of that colossal castled owned by a gentleman I had not yet met, named...

Vader.

* * *

_It's just the intro. Hope you enjoyed. Tell me your thoughts on this idea and see if you think of any solutions for snags that I might hit in the storyline. ALSO HMU if you going to SW CELEBRATION._

_If you are good at photoshop and can make a sexy cover like the movie poster but with Vader. GO FOR IT AND SEND IT TO ME._


	2. Green Light

_Green Light_

_Alright here's the first official chapter. _

_Thank you to everyone who commented, favorited, and followed._

_READ MY A/N at the bottom. Enjoy _

_-jedimasterroyal_

* * *

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented an apartment in one of the strangest communities in Coruscant. It was on that slender riotous district which extends itself due east, that I pondered the past. The Jedi Temple used to loom over the district. A few apartment complexes scattered around it but for the most part it had been solitary. A stick in the mud. During the Clone Wars I visited the temple a few times, mostly because of my blooming friendship with the Jedi Masters there. I assumed its location was chosen as to be apart from the rest of society. The Jedi always seemed as magical wizards set apart to do greater good. That was until, Emperor Palpatine rose to power and destroyed the Jedi. Apparently the Jedi were behind the whole Clone Wars. I really was not convinced, but it was not in my place to care or doubt. And so a grand new Era of Imperial peace and luxury was offered to those who were loyal. Hence my motivation to come to Coruscant.

The temple had long ago been destroyed. Now it was Vader's castle that stood. Bast Castle.

The history of the summer really began the night I drove to my cousin Padme's house. She lived across the bay of glimmering apartment complexes in the old Senate District in 500 Republica.

Her husband was heir to one of the Galaxy's wealthiest families. His name was Rush Clovis. I'd known Rush during my university years and just after the war I spent two days with them in Naboo.

Clovis, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful politicians that ever existed in Scipio— a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy — even in the university his freedom with money was a matter for reproach — but now he'd left Naboo and came to Coruscant in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he'd brought down a string of shaak ponies from the Lake Country. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came to Imperial City I don't know. They had spent a year in Alderaan for no particular reason, and then drifted from Scipio to Naboo, unrestfully wherever people played sabacc and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Padme over the comm, but I didn't believe it — I had no sight into Padme's heart, but I felt that Rush would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable debate or political issue.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to 500 Republica in the Senate District to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their penthouse was even more elaborate than I expected, at the top floor with the biggest veranda I had ever seen, overlooking the district and far beyond to Imperial Center, the Opera House, and Senate Buildings. Inside it was luxuriously furnished with the most distinguishable art and ceramic pieces from all over the galaxy. The landing pad, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Rush Clovis in fashionable warrior like clothes was standing with his legs apart ready to greet me.

He had changed since his Theed years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. He seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great amount of muscle, at least for a politician that is. It was a body capable of enormous leverage — a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked — and there were men at Theed who had hated his guts.

"Obi-Wan! How's the great Nubian novel coming?"

"Oh, I'm in the Academy now," I replied.

"Hm, is that so."

We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny veranda.

"This is a very nice place I have, don't you agree?," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a various garden pots, that contained only the most exotic and beautiful flowers of Naboo, and a snub-nosed speeder that I had parked next to.

He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space. The windows were ajar and gleaming. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the building. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Rush Clovis shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it — indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

"Obi-Wan, is that you?"

The other girl, Padme, made an attempt to rise — she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression — then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

Padme Amidala. The golden girl. A breathless warmth flowed from her. A promise that there was no one else in the world she so wanted to see.

"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.

"All of Theed and All of Aldera is desolate. All the speeders and ships have the left rear thruster painted black as a mourning wreath…" I explained

"No…"

"and there's a persistent wail all night along the north mountains…"

"No…"

"They're screaming, they're shouting…."

"No-"

"Padme Amidala, we can't live without you!"

"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness." She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face.

Padme led me to the sofa and introduced me to her lady companion.

"Miss Kryze; a _very _famous duchess."

At any rate, Miss Kryze's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again — the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.

She was the most frightening person I'd ever seen and yet I enjoyed looking at her.

"I've seen your face in the reports during the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan Kenobi…" I say as I extend my hand.

The Duchess merely yawns and stands.

I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

Rush Clovis, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.

"Who's your instructors in the Academy?"

I told him.

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in Imperial City."

"Oh, I'll stay in Coruscant, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Padme and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a Force damned fool to live anywhere else."

At this point Miss Kryze said: "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started — it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember."

"Don't look at me," Padme retorted, "I've been trying to get you to the Opera all afternoon."

"No, thanks," said Miss Kryze to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training."

Her host looked at her incredulously.

"You are!" Padme took down her drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."

I looked at Miss Kryze, wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her blue aqua eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

"You live in the Imperial Center district," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there."

"I don't know a single —" I started.

"You must know Vader."

"Vader?" demanded Padme. "What Vader?"

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Rush Clovis compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

At the dinner table Padme and the Duchess talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Rush and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from Naboo, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.

"You make me feel uncivilized, Padme," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"

I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Rush violently. "I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Now I'm not too fond of the Empire but here's one thing they got right. Have you read 'The Rise of the Non-human species' by Palpatine?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the human race will be — will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"Rush's getting very profound," said Padme, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we —"

"Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Rush, glancing at her impatiently. "The Emperor has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us, who are the dominant species, to watch out or these other species will have control of things."

"We've got to beat them down," whispered Padme, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

"You ought to live in Mandalore —" began Miss Kryze, but Rush interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Padme seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.

"I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's about the butler's snout. Do you want to hear about the butler's snout?"

"That's why I came over tonight."

"Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be a Gungan warrior in Naboo that led an attack against the trade federation. He had to fight it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his tongue —"

"Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Kryze.

"Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position."

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened — then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.

The butler came back and murmured something close to Rush's ear, whereupon Rush frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Padme leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.

"I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a — of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Kryze for confirmation: "An absolute rose?"

This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.

The Duchess and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh!" in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Kryze leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.

"This Vader you spoke of is my neighbor —" I said.

"Don't talk. I want to hear what happens."

"Is something happening?" I inquired innocently.

"You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Kryze, honestly surprised. "I thought everybody knew."

"I don't."

"Why —" she said hesitantly, "Rush's got some woman down in the Works."

"Got some woman?" I repeated blankly.

Miss Kryze nodded.

"She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don't you think?"

Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Rush and Padme were back at the table.

"It couldn't be helped!" cried Padme with tense gaiety.

She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Kryze and then at me, and continued: "I looked outdoors for a minute, and it's very romantic outdoors." Her voice sang: "It's romantic, isn't it, Rush?"

"Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "I want to take you to the veranda."

The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Padme shook her head decisively at Rush the subject of the veranda, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one, and yet to avoid all eyes. None of us could ignore that fifth guest's shrill metallic urgency.

The veranda, needless to say, was not mentioned again. Rush and Miss Kryze, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Padme around a chain of connecting verandas that led to the viewing of the Coruscanti traffic and nightlife. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a stone bench.

Padme took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.

"Oh Obi-Wan," she said suddenly.

"What?"

"It's just..." She hesitated. "Well, you see, I think everything's terrible anyhow. You know I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything, and I have had an unpleasant time Obi-Wan…I'm pretty cynical about everything."

Evidently she had reason to be.

"Listen, Obi-Wan; let me tell you what I said to my handmaidens when I was Queen. Would you like to hear?"

"Very much."

"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about — things. Well, I was about to finish my term as Queen and Rush was God knows where, with God knows whom. I gathered my handmaidens and we all sat down. 'all right,' I said, 'I hope you'll all be fools after this— that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Rush's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated — God, I'm so sophisticated! You see Obi-Wan, all the bright precious things fade so fast and they don't come back."

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Rush belonged.

Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light.

Rush and Miss Kryze sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the _Holonet News_. — the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the golden yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.

When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.

"To be continued," she said, resting the pad on the table, "in our very next issue."

Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.

"Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to bed."

"Satine's going to demand pacifism over the trouble in Mandalore," explained Padme, "tomorrow at the Senate."

"Oh — you're Duchess Satine of Mandalore."

I knew now why her face was familiar — its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the political life. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.

When I reached my veranda back in my apartment, I ran the speeder in its room and stood for awhile staring off into Coruscanti traffic. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, a persistent chattering sound as the full bellows of the underground blew the lower levels full of life. The silhouette of moving speeders wavered across the moonlight, and upon reaching my telescope to watch the traffic (I was quite the stargazer back home), I saw that I was not alone —for a distance away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's spire veranda and was standing with his hands crossed, regarding the silver pepper of the galaxy. Something told me it was Vader

I almost waved to him. Satine had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn't, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone (and the fact that he probably would not be able to see me from such a distance also discouraged me) — he stretched out his arms toward the dark night in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.

Involuntarily I moved my telescope through the tumultuous cityscape — and distinguished nothing out of the ordinary except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a veranda dock. When I looked once more for Vader he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

* * *

_It's really tricky to apply everything Great Gatsby to Star Wars. For example I had to learn the whole layout of Coruscant so I could decide what would replace the layout of New York. Obviously the beautiful thing about fan fiction is that I can do whatever I want, but I still like to have some basis of organization. So you'll see that Vader's castle is right where the Jedi Temple is because it makes sense that he can stare directly to Padme's apartment. (Remember in Episode III when both Ani/Padme stared at each other through the window.) _

_Also, _

_so last week I told you guys that if you think of any snags I might hit in the writing of this fic please let me know and so one of the reviewers mentioned that Padme does not make a good Daisy Buchanan because Daisy was insecure and was at fault for Gatsby's death at the end. This is very true. Believe me when I say that I've pondered quite a lot in the characterization. In studying Daisy, though, there is so much more than her insecurity. I think I read somewhere on Tumblr that Daisy gets criticized a lot for being a dumb character. Daisy is in fact, the harsh realistic point in the novel, she understands that dreams die and that things you value sometimes are not valuable. Although this is not exactly what Padme believes it is a similar to the line of thought that duty creates. Both Daisy and Padme follow duty. They foolishly and selfishly fall in love but ultimately return loyally to their moral obligations. Their insecurity is only at play when they are faced with the challenge of love. _

_Nonetheless, Daisy does suck. She lets Tom stomp on her. She uses Gatsby as a revenge fuck. So I'll tweak Padme's character a bit later and her reasons for doing certain things will be different than Daisy's._

_So please keep the review coming and let me know of anything. Hopefully things will get answered as the story continues._

_-jedimasterroyal_


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